


Scale

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [247]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Actual History incorporated here, And...a new villain appears, Gen, POV Third Person Omniscient, Red Light District, San Francisco, set concurrent with Maeglin fic 'I too believe it's not dead and gone'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24516331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: He lied as boldly as some men told the truth; he spoke truth only in hesitant pieces.
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [247]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Scale

Ten-odd years before it was known as the Barbary Coast, the cross-stitch of streets that split the hills and drank at the borders of the Buena Vista Cove had unlearned a lesson taught by several hangings, not so many months before.

It was an ugly world, that side of San Francisco. Since the first madness of the Rush, the place had filled like a barrel of salt fish with Australian drunkards, louts, and scoundrels—cast-off Englishmen, the lot. They were called the Sydney Ducks, and they fattened like ducks, too, slippery with the easy crime of a place where upright women were scarce, families a distant figment of memory, and order kept only by the grimy touch of discovered gold.

They set the city afire. They paid off and were paid off. When at last the citizens of San Francisco revolted in turn, and hanged two of the leaders, the Ducks, some said, swam out with the tide.

Peace—that was the lesson the hangings were intended to instruct upon. Violence, however, is a poor teacher.

The tide came in from the west and left with it. No one was looking east, therefore, when Melkor Bauglir’s money flowed in to pave the railroad’s way. No one knew his name for some time, though they knew his money and his hired soldiers. So it often was: people knew the names of the men hanged, and then forgot them, without forgetting what the cove had been. They learned the name of David Broderick, who ran for Senate as their savior, and remembered him for his iron fist of sin.

The fist was not his. The iron was not his. Different tales will be told of _that_.

The city could not afford to concern itself these contradictions, at the winter-chilled conclusion of 1852. Within a year, the brothels and drinking houses had reopened with a vengeance. The streets ran again with violence, and the pockets of those entrusted to lead were padded with payments, dependent on unsavory terms.

One such place of brothel business was called _The Golden Dragon_ , in mockery of the Chinese residents who had not been permitted to remain in the flat of rooms above its loud and dingy hall. The man who exited that hall on a morning in early December was confident of his prospects. He would pursue them in half-and-hour beside the wares of Arthur the fishmonger.

He was, too, more golden than the fearsome lizard emblazoned on the sign swinging above. His coat was suede-bodied, trimmed with brocade. His neckerchief, silk foulard; his buttons, gem-pricked. His boots gleamed, because he had made the girl polish them after she pleasured him. Despite the additional service, his wallet was heavier than when he had first entered the place. In addition to cheating his fancywomen, he spoke wherever he went with eloquent, brisk conviction, and he was a wicked hand at cards.

His face was decidedly handsome, to those he charmed. He trimmed his pencil-thin mustache and fashionable goatee with deliberate precision. They had called him a dandy, in the east, and he had been sneeringly proud of the title. He lied as boldly as some men told the truth; he spoke truth only in hesitant pieces. At times he could be disarmingly intimate, always with the intent to ensnare. He valued appearance over most things.

Appearance had won him successes, as a slave-catcher in Yankee territory. They trusted a man like him because he didn’t look or talk like an overseer. With the connections he had made and varnished, he would have owned a plantation in five more years.

But storms were brewing in the south, and he went west.

Anne McCalagon was known to him because she pulled the strings of every worthy purse in San Francisco, and he thought she could use his talents for bluffing and his skill with a gun. He kept himself so fine that he could dazzle the brothel rabble and the politic menfolk alike. He had written her a list of his own references, every slave caught and returned. The wit of his descriptions must have tickled her.

He knew how to tickle a woman.

Glaurung admired the toes of his boots, and hailed a coach.

**Author's Note:**

> Sydney Ducks info here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/When-derelicts-from-Down-Under-overran-San-13092716.php
> 
> Broderick was an abolitionist but otherwise a huge tool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C._Broderick


End file.
